Musings and meanderings on the wonderful world of wireless from Matt Hatton, Director at Machina Research (www.machinaresearch.com) the world's leading advisors on M2M, IoT and mobile broadband strategy.

Thursday, 24 July 2014

PTC acquires Axeda for USD170m - Machina Research predicted something similar in January

Yesterday PTC announced that it was further bolstering its M2M/IoT credentials by acquiring Axeda for USD170 million. This is hot on the heels of PTC's purchase of IoT platform provider ThingWorx for USD112 million in December 2013.

The idea that the capabilities of an M2M specialist such as Axeda could be combined with the horizontal IoT platform capabilities of ThingWorx, were predicted by Machina Research in our Strategy Report "Competitive Dynamics in the M2M Platform Space" published in January 2014:

"Application Support Platforms (such as Axeda) are likely to be hit hardest by the advent of the M2M/IoT Application Platform. Really, the best way forwards for Application Support platforms will be to secure deals with the likes of companies like ThingWorx so that they can market services as being 'powered by' a company like ThingWorx, or as having 'ThingWorx inside'. Essentially, Application Support platforms will suffer from the lack of scale needed to develop their own M2M/IoT Application Platform capability, whilst facing stiff competition from companies that do leverage M2M/IoT Application Platform capabilities to productise their competing offerings."

"An alternative approach may be for an Application Support platform to position itself as a niche specialist and to partner with a M2M/IoT Application Platform, effectively almost as a channel to market. Such a specialism could either be functional or industry led."

If you would like to know more about our research of M2M/IoT platforms, please contact me.